


the last marauder

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: reflections (a harry potter fanfiction collection) [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>war changes people. </p><p>(death is inevitable)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last marauder

A letter of unknown origin shows up at Andromeda Tonk’s cottage and Andromeda says  _ nothing _ as she hands Remus the letter. 

This was the first indication that something was wrong. 

The second had been that she had closed the Windows, and eyed the door with a dark passion as if she wanted to cleanse herself of sins of the past.

The letter sits in Remus’s hand. Unopened. (He doesn't want the news of another death this early in the morning, and he is especially wary when Andy Tonks hands him a bottle of very old firewhiskey.)

* * *

 

He doesn't get the chance to open the letter until far later, because Order news comes in and he's busy with Dora and by the the time he does get the opportunity to open the letter he can only help but feel dread. 

The parchment is thicker than the ones the students of hogwarts used. More textured, worn. Crisper, as if preserved for over a decade or more and only recently used. If he squints, he notices that the ink is fresh, and there is no signature attached to it. (But he has a feeling it needs no signature, he recalls only dimly the deaths of the McKinnons and how similar it had been to this day and he doesn't understand why Andy had not inspected it more.)

_ Pettigrew dead. Died trying to save Potter Junior. Choked to death.  _

Remus doesn't understand why he feels like mourning. Peter had long been gone, long been a traitor.  _ So why did it hurt so much?  _ (The wolf stirs, and Remus can almost sense the fierce ripplings it would send throughout his body in its rage- it was alone, for once. For the dog, the stag and the rat were dead and who else would accompany it in its moonlit adventures of over twenty years ago?) 

The bottle of musky firewhiskey rests on the table beside him, three-quarters full and Remus cannot believe that he is the last Marauder. 

(He isn't. He isn't. He  _ isn't _ .)

* * *

The wolf howls at the moon in mourning, deep sorrowful stretches only broken by a brief minutes peace. It mourns many things, and for once, all things fall silent as the howling dissipates throughout the night immersing everyone in its vicinity with the long and continuous soars of noise.

Remus wakes up to more scratches than normal, and Dora smothers him in a hug, her barely obvious stomach pressing against the bandages that cover his body. He allows himself to lean onto her, as sobs, uncontrollably tragic sobs that he can't hold back any longer, ravage his body, diminishing the size of it. 

He repeats between the broken sobs of two decades, “Dora, I’m the last marauder.”

(She only holds him tighter as he mourns them, their legacy, everything that he recollects on them coloured by the painstaking clarity of nostalgia of bygones, and the sobs shake his body in uncontrollable waves and he has never felt this lonely.)

* * *

 

Remus destroys all photographs he has remaining of the Marauders one day, and all that remains are the ashes that he blows away out into the sea. 

He says nothing as he nods to a watching Tonks from the window, instead settling for watching the ashes float into the sea, as they permeate the sea with nostalgia of years he has kept within himself. 

(He still doesn't quite believe he is the last Marauder.)

* * *

 

 

For years to come, a male orphaned metamorphagi would scrounge through Remus Lupin’s objects. Analysing them for the smallest of things, the slightest chance that it would lead him to his dad. 

One day, he stops looking. He leaves the attic, locks the door, and never once returns to look ever again. 

On the floor lies something new: a sealed letter. Undated, but the writing is honest and vulnerable and when Teddy Lupin leaves the attic that day he leaves behind his demons. 

(He leaves with a parchment bearing the death of Peter Pettigrew and he returns to his rented flat and reads the well engraved words over and over again. 

But why does he find this piece of parchment important when it could have easily been forged by anyone?)

* * *

 

The letter reads:

_ Dear dad, _

_ Hi. It's teddy. Gramma Andy told me that you don't have any other pictures of the Marauders, of Lily, of James, of Sirius.  _

_ I looked through your old stuff the other day. Why are there photo albums that have no photos in them? Why are there dates underneath where the photos would go? Why did you destroy them dad?  _

_ Gramma Tonks won't tell me the truth.  She says that you wanted to forget, to ignore the existence of the Marauders because the memories were too painful.  _

_ I think that she's lying. All Uncle Harry and the Weasley family talks about is how awesome the Marauders were. So why would you want to forget something like that? All the laughs you held with James and Sirius? With Lily? Why would you want to erase all evidence of that?  _

_ I don't know what you look like when you were young. I want to, but it's hard when even you don't know the truth. Gramma Andy tells me I look like you, Uncle Harry too from the few pictures he has. Even the caretaker, Mr. Malfoy, says that I look like you. Only he refuses to tell he how he knows, but instead tells me that if they (he never said who they was) were to know that more archives existed they would have over glamourised them.  _

_ Dad, I don't understand. I want to, because everyone who knows stuff is old but I want to be able to talk to you and ask you in person why. Why the pictures are gone, why people always say I'm like you.  _

_ Dad, I don't understand. Help me understand. _

_ Teddy Lupin. _

* * *

 

(The irony would be that Teddy would destroy all pictures he had one day. That one day he would set his own flat alight, and let everything burn to ashes. The ashes would fall to the ground, and in it, would be the remains of Uncle Harry’s only remaining pictures of the Marauders, the Marauders Map, and his dad’s things. 

The letter would remain in the attic, a lone beacon of white gathering dust in the house of a dying old woman.)

**Author's Note:**

> i call this i wrote this on my phone at eleven pm and now i can't even look at it. 
> 
> all mistakes are mine; yell at me @ daisys-johnsons.tumblr.com


End file.
